Second blog post. About my project

Culture of land and soul

I`m doing my EVS project in association «LandKunstLeben», which is located in rural area of Brandenburg approx. 40Km from Berlin.

LandKunstLeben was founded by 3 friends, who organize interesting projects for the community of nearby villages and sustein ecological lifestyle out of the city. Along with constant affiliates LandKunstLeben recieves German volunteers within the frameworks of FSJ Kultur and international volunteers (like me). Right now we are 3 volunteers from Germany, France and Belarus. Two more are awaited in May.

The concept.

Land. The biggest part of my work is to maintain 2ha community garden in Steinhöfel along with other volunteers and workers. We plant more than 180 sorts of vegetables and fruites, mostly rare and old sorts, like ground almond, black salsify and ground-cherry. We try to attract people to be involved in gardening and agriCULTURE. It`s more than just planting and becoming harvests, more than growing your own crops. It`s ecological lifestyle in which you stay connected with nature and cultivate it and become healthy food. So mostly every project is connected somehow with this garden. We have a union «Agronauts salon», unique outdoor culinary workshops, where people can cook courses with genuine old sorts from garden, spring and summer festivals, tofu workshop.

...Kunst (Culture). Another part of our work are cultural projects with artists. We try to deurbanise culture and art and make it accessible to people from smaller towns and villages, by inviting artists, fotographers and other performers.

Right now I`m helping to issue the cookbook with recipies from former volunteers and refugees who took part in projects of LandKunstLeben. Our concept is to find connecting points between different cultures through cuisine. Thereby we rethink notion of individual cultures that develop in borders of countries and see strong connection in our common human culture.

Leben (Life). Besides working hours I have enough free time to do things I have only dreamt to do in Minsk: I learn to play the guitar, I have time to improve my German, I read books in original, I went to a football match in Olympia stadium, to a demo against intesive lifestock animal farming; I travel a lot (Berlin, Potsdam, Hamburg, Budapest, Weimar, Freiburg) and watch series and movies.

So do I feel good here? Yes, for sure. And it's not only about the place, it's because of the people — we are a classy team.

If you want to learn more about our projects, please follow our FB page: https://www.facebook.com/landkunstleben